Autobiographical Research and the Emergence of the Fictive Voice

ABSTRACT

Autobiographical research is promoted as a means by which educational practitioners can critically analyse their professional lives. This goes beyond the valuable work already done on teachers’ lives by embracing personal critique. However, much of recent psychological research into autobiographical memory, particularly in terms of its veridicality or truth content, has not been widely disseminated within the world of education. This article discusses such research and its application to professional autobiography. It also offers a means forward for further study, emanating from the author's own autobiographical analysis. This is termed the fictive voice. By this is meant memories which, recreated from the perspective of hindsight and one's own self‐schema, are believed incorrectly to be true, but which may, when critiqued, offer the means by which one can arrive at an accurate recreation of one's professional past